Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

We do not need divine assitance for anything really

You are old, you are retired, you are lonely, you are depressed, you are derailed, you want to get rid of alcohol addiction, drug addiction, porn addiction, you are bedridden or in jail – people will advise you to do some irrational stuff like reading holy books, praying to god etc. but rational people do not get so easily convinced with irrationality.

Glenn, a painter living in Manhattan, When he first went to an A.A. meeting 27 years ago, he found himself confronted by religious language and ritual that he considered anathema. Desperate to stop drinking, he tried to fit in.

“They had this fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude,” recalled Glenn, “This feeling that the religion will catch up with you. It worked in the sense that I got sober. But I got weary of it. It felt mindless.”

Soon after resuming A.A., though, he heard about a meeting designed for atheists. Though he found that group dogmatic in its own way — more concerned with criticizing religion than with reinforcing sobriety–he subsequently discovered a meeting for humanists and freethinkers.

In its “fellowship of concerned, loving people,” he said, he found a secular version of the “Higher Power” to which A.A. literature refers. Humanist A.A. groups also have drafted their own nontheistic versions of the 12 steps. Instead of needing divine assistance for recovery, for example, one step states that “we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity. By now, Glenn has sponsored seven humanists into A.A. He regularly attends three secular A.A. meetings each week.

People, sane or insane, can become addicted to different things. But secular or non-religious people do not require divine assistance for recovery. Ideas of rationalism and humanism are enough to encourage people in order to get rid of addiction and live life to the fullest, because we only get one life to live and obviously there is no afterlife!

Comments

I used to pick books from both sides while I was at the cross roads, not sure of the truth. Now more often than not I pick God delusion by RIchard Dawkins over SCience of self realization by prabhupada. I think the big realization comes from experience of being a human. It’s an enigma to me how the centuries of knowledge sharing focused on making what was already known as unreal and irrational into spiritual learning and drove billions into complete submission. Like your article like millions do. Keep going.

Good idea. It will join such nonreligious alternatives as Rational Recovery and Secular Organizations for Sobriety.

BTW, I remember once imagining a 12-step program for recovering from trollishness, a program I called Trolls Anonymous. I turned the higher power into the Trolls Anonymous community, something I thought more appropriate than some deity.

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[…] You are old, you are retired, you are lonely, you are depressed, you are derailed, you want to get rid of alcohol addiction, drug addiction, porn addiction, you are bedridden or in jail – people will advise you to do some irrational stuff like reading holy books, praying to god etc. but rational people do not get so easily convinced with irrationality. Now, non religious Alcoholics Anonymous meetings began. Isn’t it fantastic! Let’s see what happened to Glenn. [Read more] […]